SA's first black freediver makes waves

ZANDILE Ndhlovu holds her breath.

- WENDY JASSON DA COSTA

She's 25m underwater, without oxygen, and face-to-face with a bull shark off Sodwana Bay on KwaZulu-Natal's north coast.

Man and beast engage in a silent stare-off. Then the shark glides away.

It's not a movie scene, but a regular moment in the life of Ndhlovu - South Africa's pioneering Black freediver, widely known as the "Black Mermaid." "You can't leave until the bull shark stops the stare-down," she says, because you have to establish dominance. "And then it eventually leaves, and you just break for the surface because you realise that if you hold yourself and you calm yourself, the animal is calm." Ndhlovu, known for her blue braids and fearlessness in the ocean, is a research assistant for an award-winning team of scientists featured in Shark Week 2025, airing this week on Discovery Channel Africa (DStv 121).

Throughout the week, a series of documentaries will spotlight African scientists, conservationists, and filmmakers helping to reshape shark science and ocean storytelling.

Ndhlovu and her colleagues; shark geneticist Gibbs Kuguru and marine biologist Ryan Johnson, appear in the documentary Great White Reign of Terror, which investigates a spate of shark encounters in the Eastern Cape.

Her job is to dive in and retrieve whatever the science team needs.